Pete Bidwell

Full transcript: Pete Bidwell on London Real

0:03 I’m here with Pete Bidwell, recent graduate of the Business Accelerator. Pete, am I graduate? You are a graduate. Could you tell us about you? Where are you from, what do you do? From Como originally, born in 1979. I’m a DJ, been a DJ for about 12 years, and I live in Ibiza. I’m based in Ibiza, and my whole life is surrounded around that world of music and Ibiza.

0:28 So that’s… Can you describe that a little bit? Yeah, it was great. I mean, summertime is quite short. I’ve got about four or five months of a really hectic time, which builds up over a two-month period and then massive for like the school holidays really, and then it kind of tails off. So it’s a long build-up from middle of May until June, July, and then kind of September, and, you know, slowing down again. So it’s nice.

1:01 And then the winter is very long, it’s seven months. A lot of people go away, but this is my first full winter there. I’ve been over the last two years, but I think, take me away, I go travelling, this never happens. Oh yeah, what’s the way in, being a DJ? Well, it’s, it’s my life, so I don’t look at it like that. I just like to play records. I never set out to be that, I never wanted to be in front of people. It was a love of music, and yeah, just happened really.

1:38 From buying music and collecting music, and then going out and listening to music, listening to the records that I really loved and buying them, and then over a period of time I had a big collection, and then I bought some turntables and started to mix and select and DJ that way. So it’s just a slow process of, you know, things that just kept… I mean, I always wanted to play like my peers.

2:10 And I would chase DJs around the country and watch, you know, the same people many times, and that was how I… I put on an event in 2002, it went really well, and it was in a, you know, it’s like a kind of an illegal party really. My boss at the time didn’t really like what I was doing, so gave me a bit of an ultimatum, so I left the job, moved to London a couple of years later, got a lot more practice.

2:34 I was playing at a friend’s birthday party in a little bar in Chelsea, which is still there, and the manager liked my music, and she invited me over to Hungary to go and play for her and her brother, who were doing parties in Budapest, and that was my second gig really. Well, so, you know, because I had the free illegal party and then the birthday party for my friend, and then Hungary.

2:58 And then after that I started working as a resident DJ in and around London. I built it up over a couple of years, I was playing pretty much every day, and then I moved away to Australia and lived all over the world, a couple of seasons in Austria, and then Ibiza. Okay, and what brought you to us? What challenge were you going through?

3:23 Well, someone introduced me to TEDx, someone very close to me, and I would watch these short 15-minute talks, and I was always interested in the universe and psychedelic, some things like this. And I don’t really know which way around it came, because my mind is just constantly musing all the time, the timeline of events has me kind of… pinpoint anything like that. And I watched, I don’t know, really it was probably an ayahuasca thing, Fearless, and then you just start emailing me, adding stuff.

4:11 So in my… seek us out, then, on the accelerator? Like, what were you going through in your life? Well, well, I mean, this is really the reason why I moved to Ibiza initially, two years ago, because I was in a very dark place, and it’s easier to talk about now, but then it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy. If I didn’t move to Ibiza two years ago in January, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. It was, you know, it wasn’t a good place I was in.

4:49 A few months later it really sort of… these feelings, and, you know, part of it was this, part of it was that one thing, I wasn’t really happy with the job I was doing. I was working for a very big brand, so I’d have my dream job, and, you know, you realise quite quickly that the job you’re doing, you’re doing it because that’s what you think you want to be, but you have to make sacrifices to be there, and the sacrifices I was making were playing music I didn’t really love, kind of thing.

5:27 And that makes you unhappy, when you’re doing something you love but you’re not doing one hundred percent what you love. And I took about a year off, and at the end of the year I found that the course was starting soon, so yeah, it all kind of came together. But I had a lot of time by myself. I started yoga about a year ago, been doing that for a year now, nearly every day, more recently every day and longer, and meditation started around the same time.

6:03 But that time by myself really taught me a lot about myself as well, because I entered into a relationship which was kind of complicated, because I met this great girl from Spain who was doing a PhD over in Auckland. She was supposed to finish in May and she didn’t finish, and she got funding, which meant she had to stay, and there were a few ups and downs between us, and, well, I didn’t go, I’m here, and that’s difficult as well.

6:48 So, but the course was like halfway through, and I had the opportunity to open or start the event, which is what I wanted to do, and I’d learnt a few skills to kind of get that rolling, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t do both, it’s impossible. Had a team of seven, well, eight including me, but managing that is, you know, when it’s all friends and everybody’s got a different skill set… It was early days of that. Now there’s, I think, not too sure, probably four of us now, with four events in.

7:21 And, well, yeah, just before I came here, I had another piece of news from the event owner, from the club owner, telling me that, hey, well, how happy… how things were going, he wanted to cancel it. So I’m looking for a new home again, and I’ve signed a contract with these guys, so that’s something I’ve got to deal with. As well as graphic design and artwork and social media and that. Resistance. Yeah, but I’m enjoying it, you know, and I didn’t drift through it, you know. It’s a lot better than two years ago, when you want to put a belt up on the wall. I mean, that is not good, is it?

8:03 So you came to join us because you were looking to start this night in the winter? It’s just kind of an interesting market. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the thing is, for me, I’m not a promoter. I’ve never… I may have done a few parties in the past, but, you know, when I look back, with the help of a venue or the help of a team of people, and, you know, I don’t really know people that… that sort of helped me do that. So I thought, well, let’s try and do something ourselves, let’s see how we go, try and learn how to do it, get some experience, and also, like, the name out there at least.

8:48 Because I’ve been doing the radio for a long time now. 2012 I started doing radio, and then about three years ago I started pretty much what this became. Two years ago I started my show, Circle, and we’re now on 101 episodes in, and my hundredth episode was, you know, maybe two weeks ago, and had very big artists on, which was great. And over the course of those 101 episodes I’ve had quite big people come on there. You know, if I look at the list, I’m very proud of it.

9:22 You know, that’s partly because of who I know, but that’s how it works, isn’t it? It’s always who you know. So why go ahead and join the accelerator? What made you…? This is what we’ll be doing, and I think really, I felt like I wasn’t doing anything. I felt like I needed a bit of a kick. I hadn’t played for a while, it was May time, and I tried to get residencies again, and I played in three or four places and didn’t feel it, and they didn’t feel it, and didn’t get any repeat work, and I was like knocking on a lot of doors and it wasn’t coming easily, it wasn’t flowing.

10:01 I went back to the big brand and that wasn’t flowing easily either. And I did have an opportunity to speak to the owner of the big brand and I didn’t take it, and the reason I didn’t was because I just thought, you’ve got to move forward, you can’t go back. If you go back, that’s… okay, so it’s got to be on my hands. So, but since then things have really moved forward for me, because I’ve been focusing more on the genres that I’m playing, rather than being a bit of an eclectic mix, which I like, but I think you need to kind of, like, you know, just focus a bit more on that.

10:52 And since then people have just come to me, and I haven’t really asked for it, it’s just flowing. Funny how that works, it’s strange. What were the first few weeks of the accelerator like? Oh, I really liked the first ten days actually, before it started, that was great, that was probably the favourite bit. If you had ten days between every module, that would probably be more happy. No, it was, yeah, it was good. The first few weeks, you say… What did you find challenging? What did you find interesting? Managing my time, actually.

11:32 Yeah, managing my time is challenging, because I was trying to run all my artists’ social profiles, trying to start all of the Circle Ibiza ones, trying to get it right, what I was supposed to be doing in each specific social media platform, vlogging, writing copy and doing a website. It just, it’s not… I don’t want to do that. I’m going to obviously do parts of those things, but it takes away my creative side.

12:11 And for me to be creative I need to be outside in nature, a sunset and sunrise, whichever way round that happens, and just do music, just press buttons and play with sound and, you know, play records basically, nothing else, because you can get too bogged down in paperwork. And I mean, social media, I quite enjoy it now, but it has to be done.

12:42 Well, what did you… a lot of the other students here… so did you make any relationships? Yeah, yeah, I have done. Yeah, I learnt… well, it’s hard to pinpoint, I need to think about it, but, you know, different people have kind of brought things to my attention, and I need to work on, not focus on all, but there was a lot. And everybody was so inspiring. When you look at people’s work you’re saying, well, how can I make it as good as that? I’ve always thought that about myself, about everything I do, but when you see it from people that are like-minded, that’s when it’s more interesting, because you have a common goal, don’t you? And you just want to, you just want to do the best you can.

13:33 I was excited to watch your live streams on Facebook. Yeah, I mean, those are great. I mean, I’ve only got the iPhone 5 right now, unfortunately, I can only do the… and I wanted to try and keep it consistent over everyone. I didn’t want to use my phone one week, someone else’s phone another week. I wanted always to be the same until I replace my phone for one that can do that, or work out how to use, you know, a GoPro and do it like that. So that’s the next step.

13:55 But yeah, it’s something that I think was really important. I worked out on the first week you can’t stream the whole night in one go, it’s a four-hour limit, which I didn’t know. So then we were just cutting each DJ after they’d play, that kind of thing, and recording the audio separately and then uploading that, and that’s another free product. I mean, actually, all my free products, I’ve got a lot of them, a hell of a lot, because, you know, that’s one obviously, and the radio show’s another one.

14:27 The vlogging, and the event, you know, there’s a lot of free product, and we’ll give a lot of… matching those as well, and that’s something that we’re looking at doing now. And I say we because it’s not just me, there are four of us, so, and hopefully more. A free product is the product ecosystem, so that, it was probably… Yeah, I mean, that was early, that was early that we talked about that. Yeah, so, but I’ve been pivoting daily, you know, I’m always changing things.

15:05 I mean, I’m kind of sticking to some… on a timeline, and a plan, and how we’re going to move forward. I’m thinking where I want to be, and I know exactly where I want to be, on a tour, and I know which cities I want to go to, and I know which contacts I want to speak to about doing Circle in different places. It has to start in Ibiza, because that’s where I live. If I lived in London it would start here.

15:27 And I think two years after doing the radio is a good time for me to start it, because the radio is so easy for me. So I can do it in like three hours. I can download all the promos that morning, I can pretty much produce it, or do my links and get it uploaded to the station straight away, do the artwork, upload that and it’s done, and it just goes straight into the server and then it’s ready to play automatically. So I can do everything myself so fast.

15:57 So the rest of the time we need to work on everything else. Yes, and, you know, get everything else I do, you know, as quick and as batched up as that. That’s the next things that I need to do. I mean, I would like some interns. A year from now, what does Circle look like? What do you think that vision is going to look like? Well, I would like to be in Amsterdam, at ADE in October, but that will depend on how this winter goes.

16:30 Now I’m looking for a third venue, because this one cancels with me, which doesn’t make me happy, but it’s actually a good thing, so, and it’s fine, and some people that are actually more serious and stick to what they say they’re going to do. Because, you know, we both signed a contract for this, and, you know, I was told over a Facebook message, not an email, not a phone call, not a meeting. So that’s something that I’m going to have to look into and do. I went to see the guy straight. I got the message like midnight on Thursday night, I went there at four in the morning when I got up, I’d like to go and see what’s happening with this.

17:04 You know, you wanted me to sign a contract, have you read your contract? You do realise what it says? You know, both parties give four weeks’ notice. Where’s mine? It’s two days before the event. I’ve had to spend money on advertising this week, yeah, and you still haven’t paid me from the beginning, so cough up. Just resistance, right? Yeah, I mean, that’s all good, but, I mean, if I hadn’t have done it I wouldn’t have learnt anything. The next time I see a contract I’ll be ripping it to pieces and rewriting it, and if you’re not happy with it they can, they can, you know, find someone else, because, you know, I want to be a bit more careful.

17:45 Well, I look forward to watching more of your Circle Ibiza. Yeah, we need to get multiple cameras. Yeah, look, at the start, accelerators have to try things, and something might pop and something might not. So I’m glad you’re doing that, and I’m glad you’re playing with this stuff. Yeah. You know, at least you’re knowing that you don’t want to be doing the social media, and other people should be doing it, and you’re doing your own things. Yeah.

18:16 It’s been really great having you on this course. I love having you there, having your vibe there. So, you know, stay in touch with this group, there’s some good people here. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I’ve made friends already. Max and I went for coffee recently, he’s living in Ibiza half on, half off, I think. And yeah, Rob as well, we kind of connected quite well. So I met Julie yesterday for the first time, and I think she wants to come to Ibiza for Christmas and New Year, which is great, and everybody can come.

18:48 So yeah, I’d quite like to meet Thomas at some point, that would be good. Yeah, it’s just interesting to me, people in the industry, or on the edge of the industry. If it’s in the winter or if it’s in the summer? Well, only if you sign up for guestlist. Well, you can have my email. Pete, thank you, and thanks for being… I’m wishing you all the best, and like he says, well, you’re with the right energy. Absolutely. Thank you, thank you.